"The indie-est film festival this side of the Atlantic."
The Guardian

Raindance Film Festival is Europe’s leading independent film festival. Listed by Variety as one of the world's top 50 'unmissable film festivals', Raindance aims to nurture, support and promote independent films and filmmakers from the UK and around the world. Our festival is known for being bold, edgy and sometimes daring, screening all genres of feature fiction and documentary (over 70 UK Premieres a year) and over 200 shorts, making it the most noted festival of discovery and for launching debut filmmakers in Europe.

Over the years, the festival has hosted such guests and filmmakers as Christopher Nolan, Shane Meadows, Ken Loach, Marky Ramone, Iggy Pop, Anton Corbijn, Quentin Tarantino, Faye Dunaway and Lou Reed. Over the last few years our international Jury has included Lemmy, Charles Saatchi, Armando Iannucci and Tom Waits.

Last year we ended up in the deep water, with censors branding our programme the most 'controversial' of its kind in Europe. Nonetheless we hosted the premieres of all contentious films including A Serbian Film, L.A. Zombie and Stolen - a film about human slavery in a refugee camp - all received with rapturous applause. This is the only festival of its kind this side of the Atlantic, and with the unbeaten track record for discovering and supporting films, we look forward to you joining us next year.